VMware becomes an AI platform

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Broadcom has officially announced the availability of VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) 9.1; the announcement was made on May 5th, and the platform has been available for download since May 12th. The minor release focuses on three key areas: infrastructure efficiency, Kubernetes scaling, and lateral security. This clearly positions VCF as an on-premises platform for productive AI workloads.

Storage and Storage Efficiency

The revised NVMe Memory Tiering is at the core: ESXi transparently moves “cold” memory pages to NVMe SSDs, while DRAM remains reserved for “hot” data – all without affecting the operating systems. New in 9.1 are native software mirroring for NVMe tier redundancy and simplified configuration at the cluster level. Broadcom anticipates up to 40 percent lower server costs with higher consolidation rates.

On the storage side, vSAN ESA has seen significant improvements. Global deduplication now operates cluster-wide and is compatible with data-at-rest encryption. The default compression algorithm switches from LZ4 to Zstd, enabling significantly higher compression rates. As a Technology Preview, vSAN now includes native S3-compatible object storage – block, file, and object can now coexist on the same cluster. Additionally, data-in-transit encryption for vSAN storage clusters has been added.

vDefend with Turbo Mode

The biggest changes are in vDefend: The new IDPS Turbo Mode triples the throughput per host from 3 to 9 Gbit/s, with up to 9 Tbit/s possible per VCF domain. The distributed firewall identifies five times more applications at Layer 7, and identity-based firewall rules can now be enforced consistently across locations for the first time.

Architecturally, the hypervisor-native IDS/IPS engine now extends to vSphere Kubernetes Service workloads via CNI integration, including inspection at the pod level, in mixed mode with classic VMs. Tenant administrators receive a self-service model directly from VCF Automation; micro-segmentation and compliance tags are automatically orchestrated via “Privileged Labels.”

Kubernetes, networking, and Scaling

The vSphere Kubernetes Service moves to Kubernetes 1.35 in version 3.6; one supervisor manages up to 500 clusters. With VKS Fast Deploy via Linked Clones, the deployment time for a 100-node cluster is reduced from 37 to 11 minutes and upgrades from 414 to 103 minutes, according to Broadcom. Worker nodes support multiple vNICs for separating management, storage, and application traffic.

In the network stack, version 9.1 introduces EVPN-VXLAN interoperability with the physical fabric – compatible with Arista UCN, Cisco Nexus ONE, and SONiC. This allows VCF to support a distributed architecture without edge nodes. VPCs and workloads thus receive pre-configured external connectivity without administrators needing to delve deep into network configuration.

A VCF instance now manages up to 5,000 hosts; parallel upgrades of 256 clusters reduce maintenance windows by a factor of four. Live patching without system reboots now also supports TPM-enabled hosts for the first time, and a new API call allows vCenter resizing with a single PATCH request.

Security, AI Hardware, and Official ARM Support for the First Time

Encrypted vMotion offloads cryptography to Intel QAT, returning CPU cores to workloads. On-premises ransomware recovery integrates CrowdStrike Falcon, and continuous compliance enforcement provides continuous audit readiness. For AI workloads, VCF supports Nvidia's ConnectX-7 NICs and BlueField-3 DPUs with Enhanced DirectPath I/O; AMD and Nvidia GPUs are available.

ARM support in VCF 9.1 is not heavily marketed; the manufacturer did not explicitly mention it in the announcement of the new release. William Lam, Distinguished Platform Engineering Architect at Broadcom and known in the VMware community for his lab scripts, has at least announced the support on X. Accordingly, the downloads are now available.

The upgrade path from VCF 9.0 to 9.1 is intended as an in-place upgrade. Release Notes, Compatibility Matrix, and Bill of Materials are available in the Broadcom Support Portal.

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